Mixed Race Studies

Existing Across Boundaries: A Conversation with Community Journalist and Editor Sharon Ho Chang

The Seventh Wave
2021-10-15

Sharon Ho Chang knows her way around community journalism. She is the managing editor at the South Seattle Emerald, a digital news and culture publication run by and centering the BIPOC people and communities who live, work, create, and are experiencing displacement due to gentrification in the city’s Central District and South End. The Emerald is a beacon of thorough, complex, and vital reporting for the immediate area, as well as an example of how journalism can embrace multifaceted local stories that have regional, national, and even global importance. In addition to editing the Emerald, Chang is also a writer, artist, and documentarian with a lot of storytelling under her belt, including the publication of two nonfiction books — Raising Mixed Race: Multiracial Asian Children in a Post-Racial World (Routledge, 2015) and the memoir Hapa Tales And Other Lies: A Mixed Race Memoir About the Hawai’i I Never Knew (self published in 2018) — both of which explore in academic and personal ways the experience of being mixed race. She is also a photographer and videographer, and is dedicated to documenting underrepresented and underreported stories of the people and places in her community in Seattle, her family and elders in Taiwan, and her own multiracial transnational experience.

Chang spoke with Interviews Editor Sarah Neilson over Zoom about her many, many journalism projects past and present; her experiences with feedback and creative inspiration over time; voting in her first Taiwan presidential election; and what Economies of Harm means to her…

Read the entire interview here.

Dialogues Beyond the Master’s Map: An Invitation

Carlos Hoyt, Ph.D., LICSW
2022-01-08

My journey has taken me past constructions of race,
past constructions of mixed race,
and into an understanding of human difference
that does not include race as a meaningful category.
–Race and Mixed-Race: A Personal Tour, Rainier Spencer

Introduction

About ten years ago I invited people who resist the practice of racialization to talk with me about why, when, and how they arrived at a point beyond personal and social identity defined and confined by the dogma of race.

Since then, I’ve had the privilege of being able to write, talk, and teach about the implications of the non-racial worldview in a wide variety of contexts. And all along the way, I’ve heard from folks wishing to gather with others who share an anti-racialization orientation. This is an invitation to such a gathering.

If, despite being told and trained and pressured to embrace and perform a sense of identity that represents a false construct of human differences, you defy racial reduction and seek the company of others who resist racialization, please contact me. About a month from the posting of this invitation, sometime in early February, I’ll contact everyone who expressed interest with a date and time for our first gathering (via Zoom) where we’ll share perspectives and narratives of life beyond the master’s map…

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How Are Black–White Biracial People Perceived in Terms of Race?

Kellog Insight
Kellog School of Management
Northwestern University

2017-12-06

Based on the Research of:

Arnold K. Ho, Associate Professor of Psychology and of Organizational Studies
University of Michigan

Nour S. Kteily, Associate Professor of Management & Organizations
Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University

Jacqueline M. Chen, Assistant Professor of Social Psychology
University of Utah

Yevgenia Nayberg

As the nation has become more diverse, increasing numbers of Americans belong to more than one racial group. In 1970, just one in a hundred babies born was multiracial; these days, the share has climbed to one in ten.

This makes it critical for organizations—and the researchers who study them—to understand how multiracial individuals perceive themselves in terms of race, as well as how they are perceived by others.

“What’s the experience of being multiracial and feeling like others are categorizing you one way or another?” asks Nour Kteily, an assistant professor of management and organizations at the Kellogg School.

The stakes are high.

Being perceived as belonging, or not belonging, to a particular group can affect well-being. An organization might categorize a multiracial person a certain way for diversity quotas, for instance—but if she does not identify with that minority, the categorization may make her feel constrained or stereotyped.

Previous research in America has focused almost exclusively on how white people regard biracial people and has shown that they tend to categorize those of mixed race as belonging to the racial category of their minority parent. In new research with two colleagues, Kteily wanted to know whether black people tended to do the same thing.

The research finds that overall, both races view black-white biracial people as slightly “more black than white,” says Kteily.

But white and black people appear to differ in why they might classify biracial people this way. Namely, white people who classify biracial people as more black tend to hold more anti-egalitarian views, while black people who classify biracial people as more black show the opposite pattern, tending to be more in favor of equality between groups…

Read the entire article here.

“You’re one of us”: Black Americans’ use of hypodescent and its association with egalitarianism.

Journal of Personality and Social Psychology
Volume 113, Issue 5 (November 2017)
pages 753–768
DOI: 10.1037/pspi0000107

Arnold K. Ho, Associate Professor of Psychology and of Organizational Studies
University of Michigan

Nour S. Kteily, Associate Professor of Management & Organizations
Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University

Jacqueline M. Chen, Assistant Professor of Social Psychology
University of Utah

Research on multiracial categorization has focused on majority group social perceivers (i.e., White Americans), demonstrating that they (a) typically categorize Black–White multiracials according to a rule of hypodescent, associating them more with their lower status parent group than their higher status parent group, and (b) do so at least in part to preserve the hierarchical status quo. The current work examines whether members of an ethnic minority group, Black Americans, also associate Black–White multiracials more with their minority versus majority parent group and if so, why. The first 2 studies (1A and 1B) directly compared Black and White Americans, and found that although both Blacks and Whites categorized Black–White multiracials as more Black than White, Whites’ use of hypodescent was associated with intergroup antiegalitarianism, whereas Blacks’ use of hypodescent was associated with intergroup egalitarianism. Studies 2–3 reveal that egalitarian Blacks use hypodescent in part because they perceive that Black–White biracials face discrimination and consequently feel a sense of linked fate with them. This research establishes that the use of hypodescent extends to minority as well as majority perceivers but also shows that the beliefs associated with the use of hypodescent differ as a function of perceiver social status. In doing so, we broaden the social scientific understanding of hypodescent, showing how it can be an inclusionary rather than exclusionary phenomenon.

Read or purchase the article here.

Gender, Generation, and Multiracial Identification in the United States

Demography
Volume 58, Number 5 (October 2021)
pages 603–1630
DOI: 10.1215/00703370-9334366

Janet Xu, Postdoctoral Fellow
Department of Sociology
Princeton University, Princeton, New Jersey

Aliya Saperstein, Associate Professor of Sociology; Benjamin Scott Crocker Professor in Human Biology
Stanford University, Stanford, California

Ann Morning, Associate Professor of Sociology
New York University, New York, New York

Sarah Iverson, Ph.D. Candidate
Department of Sociology
New York University, New York, New York

Multiracial self-identification is frequently portrayed as a disproportionately female tendency, but previous research has not probed the conditions under which this relationship might occur. Using the 2015 Pew Survey of Multiracial Adults, we offer a more comprehensive analysis that considers gender differences at two distinct stages: reporting multiple races in one’s ancestry and selecting multiple races to describe oneself. We also examine self-identification patterns by the generational locus of multiracial ancestry. We find that females are more likely to be aware of multiracial ancestry overall, but only first-generation females are more likely than their male counterparts to self-identify as multiracial. Finally, we explore the role of racial ancestry combination, finding that multiracial awareness and self-identification are likely gendered differently for different segments of the mixed-race population. This offers a more nuanced picture of how gender interacts with other social processes to shape racial identification in the United States.

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Sarawak’s mixed-race children struggle over ‘native’ identity

Free Malaysia Today
Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
2022-01-05

Wong Pek Mei

PETALING JAYA: Alena Murang, who has mixed parentage, discovered only as an adult that she was not legally “native” in her homeland, Sarawak.

Alena, 32, a musician, songwriter and visual artist, said she and many others were oblivious to the issue. Her birth certificate said she was a Kelabit.

Her father Ose Murang, 67, is a Dayak Kelabit community leader and her mother is European.

“Only when I was an adult did I come to understand that in Sarawak, mixed children like myself are not legally native…

Read the entire article here.

On Passing and Not Trying to Pass

My Jewish Learning
2015-07-22

Tema Smith

I am black, and I am Jewish.

I’ve always found comfort in the and of my identity — that simple part of speech that joins together two disparate things: two families, two histories, two cultures, two heritages, two skin colors, two lineages of trauma, two pathways to North America. As the offspring of both, I am equally neither.

Lately, I spend a lot of time within the proverbial “walls” of the organized Jewish community. As a Jewish professional, my day-to-day life is dedicated to synagogue operations — specifically, membership and communications. While in many ways I am “at home” in the Jewish community, to this day I still feel out of place within the communal mainstream. And, contradictory as it may seem, it is the fact that I can easily pass for the Ashkenazi majority that leaves me feeling this way.

I should say: I never asked to pass. The fact that I can walk into Jewish settings and instantly fit in leaves me with a bad taste. At the same time, I remember recognizing my own thoughts when I read Katya Gibel Azoulay quote her son in her seminal book, Black, Jewish, and Interracial: It’s Not the Color of Your Skin, but the Race of Your Kin, and Other Myths of Identity: “I’m not going to put up a sign that says I’m black just to be accepted,” she relays, writing, “as far as he was concerned, the idea of ‘learning how to act Black’ was the theater of the absurd.”…

Read the entire article here.

The Colors of Love: Multiracial People in Interracial Relationships

New York University Press
December 2021
312 Pages
24 b/w illustrations
6.00 x 9.00 x 0.00 in
Paperback ISBN: 9781479802418
Hardcover ISBN: 9781479802401
eBook ISBN: 9781479802425

Melinda A. Mills, Associate Professor of Women’s and Gender Studies, Sociology, and Anthropology; Coordinator of Women’s and Gender Studies
Castleton University, Castleton, Vermont

How multiracial people navigate the complexities of race and love

In the United States, more than seven million people claim to be multiracial, or have racially mixed heritage, parentage, or ancestry. In The Colors of Love, Melinda A. Mills explores how multiracial people navigate their complex—and often misunderstood—identities in romantic relationships.

Drawing on sixty interviews with multiracial people in interracial relationships, Mills explores how people define and assert their racial identities both on their own and with their partners. She shows us how similarities and differences in identity, skin color, and racial composition shape how multiracial people choose, experience, and navigate love.

Mills highlights the unexpected ways in which multiracial individuals choose to both support and subvert the borders of race as individuals and as romantic partners. The Colors of Love broadens our understanding about race and love in the twenty-first century.

My Boyfriend’s Parents Are Ignorant About Race. Why Should I Have to Teach Them?

The New York Times
2021-11-25

Philip Galanes

Miguel Porlan

A reader seeks advice on dealing with people who undermine her experience as a mixed-race woman.

I am a mixed-race college student and identify as Black. For a year, I’ve been dating a white guy. We’ve never had an issue with race — until now. When I met his parents for the first time, ahead of the family’s big Thanksgiving feast, his father told me that being mixed race is “the best of both worlds.” I didn’t follow. So, he explained: You’re “really white,” but you get the advantages of being Black in college admissions and diversity hiring. I was stunned! My boyfriend, on the other hand, doesn’t see the problem. He says his parents are clueless about race, and it’s our job to help them understand. But I’m not interested in that job. I canceled my Thanksgiving visit, and now my boyfriend is mad at me. Advice?

TRACEY

Your boyfriend and his dad both owe you apologies, for different offenses…

Read the entire letter here.

Paula Patton On The New Series ‘Sacrifice’ And Why She Doesn’t Identify As Biracial

Clay Cane Show
2021-11-04

See: Rory Evans, “Paula Patton’s Precious Moments,” Women’s Health, January 27, 2010. https://www.womenshealthmag.com/health/a19985167/precious-movie/.